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Troll
A troll is someone who purposefully and with minimal effort disrupts the calm veneer of civility by providing disinformation, violating unwritten rules of decorum, and undermining socially generated fantasies. While many of the great trolls of history have labored in real life (like Socrates, Diogenes, and the faqir), the advent of the internet has seen an unprecedented level of trolls. They stalk your favorite news sites and social networking platforms, setting traps for the overly-sincere and dredging the muck for unwitting contestants of the losing game. The goals are clear: cause as great and spontaneous a reaction from strangers with as little investment of time and energy, screen capture it and post it online for many many lulz. A Short History While many images of trolls depict them as the creature of North German and Norwegian folklore, the word is actually derived from the fishing practice of trailing bait behind a boat at various depths to entice fish to each bite into a hook or swim into an unseen net. A troll hiding in the undercarriage of a bridge waiting for some overly sincere billygoat to cross also conveys the crucial image. The most popular account of the origin of the word comes from alt.folklore.urban where long-time users would post ridiculous threads touting conspiracy theories even conspiracy theorists snort at and oddly pointless threads like "Does glass melt in the sunlight over time? Serious Inquiry." These threads would bait the less-astute or the greener members of the site into long-winded responses or exaggerated uproar. The greater the passion and purpose of the mark, the greater the bushels of lulz to harvest. Because usenet and irc were so unattractive and had too steep a learning curve for the average PC owner, these communities were small and highly insular, and trolling, while a chortle-worthy past time, rarely reached a fever pitch and almost never went beyond the newsgroup. When HTTP rolled out and web browsers became a standard tools for PCs, the population boom it brought to the internet brought with it a new kind of user: thin on skills and knowledge, these newcattullusi were eager to meet complete strangers but unaware of the inherently unethical system in which they would meet. Since then, it has been a golden age of trolling, with each new web service bringing in a fresh supply of unaware users and a new tool for trolls. The environment on the internet today, where the user base is widening and the learning curve is as shallow as the kiddies pool, has established a sinister cycle of creating trolls. A young user desperate to meet and be loved by total strangers encounters a troll who humiliates them in front of the "community". While some will quit the internet, others will retaliate by trolling others, forever reenacting their pain as the aggressor. This creates more trolls who humiliate younger users, curing some of the cancer and grooming the next wave of trolls. Soon grandma's page will be covered with tubgirl, real life friends will forget their name, and the sound of fapping with echo through the halls of their parent's townhouse. Troll Face Early images of trolls focused on ugly green monsters hiding under bridges or broad white boats tethered to offal, but today the most recognized image for trolls is the trollface. Wrinkled and twisted, the head is rendered grotesque in order to accommodate the abominable grin. This is the face the troll makes when you comment on their stupid post or delete their inappropriate response or threaten to ban them from your facebook or acknowledge their presence uncomfortably. It is the O-face of the troll, the expression that burns itself into them at the moment of lulzy climax.